The Calm Before the Storm

The Morning After – I was pretty wide awake now, and actually pretty excited. My football team was playing that afternoon (Carlton vs Port Adelaide), and Helene and Sarah were going to come in and watch the game with me. I was very aware of my surroundings in this room. It wasn’t quite ICU, but it wasn’t a normal ward. It was an intense watch room for post op patients, and my bed was right next to the nurses’ desk so they could watch me with intent. I guess that should have alerted me that something was wrong. But I was pretty oblivious – I had my little morphine button, which allowed me to self administer small doses no less than five minutes apart, and this kept me quite pain-free, a little sedated, and (unbeknownst to me) not very present.

There were four beds in that ward. Next to me was a woman who had had a thyroidectomy, and was pretty quiet. Diagonally opposite was a man who’d had fairly heavy heart surgery, and across from me was a woman who I wasn’t sure what she’d had, but boy was she noisy. She was obviously not happy being there and she made sure that everyone knew about it.

Reality? Or……? – And there was Moshe – drifting in and out of reality, it would seem. In the morning, my parents came to see me, as they would every day for the next 4 weeks. But unfortunately, I don’t remember much of that visit, except that at some point I got very agitated and asked them to call Helene and get her to come in, which they did. I then fell asleep and didn’t wake up till she arrived. And that was pretty much how Sunday (and the next few days) went. Me waking, being in pain, pressing the morphine button a few times, drifting in and out of reality, making (paranoid) observations about the other patients, the nurses, and everyone else, and then falling asleep again. Often, I would fall asleep in the middle of a sentence, and then wake up god knows how much later, and just continue speaking.

I think everyone just assumed that this was all a combination of the after-effects of the anaesthetic plus the side-effects of the morphine. I’d sometimes catch one of my daughters giggling and I’d just get annoyed and ask “what’s the matter?” And then Helene would say something like “There, there – it’s all ok honey” and I’d just get more annoyed and demand that they stop patronising me. It must have been very difficult for them. My life was easy: wake up, look around, press the morphine button, pontificate on the ills of the world (particularly the ills of the hospital), press the button again, and fall asleep again.

And all the while, I was still being kept in the big post-op intense scrutiny ward. And oh, I almost forgot. I wasn’t allowed to eat or drink. I could put some ice on my lips but no swallowing!! And boy WAS I THIRSTY!!

Monday, May 17th 2010

Getting Better? – Well it seemed like I was improving. Even though I was starting to not distinguish between night and day (it was more like asleep and half-asleep), things did appear rosier. First of all my team had won yesterday – for the second week in a row! And it was a mini-comeback after trailing at the end of the third quarter. It’s funny how most Aussies, particularly in the Southern states, rate the quality of their life based on the current fortunes of their football team. And trust me when I say that this is not restricted to any particular social or economic class. It has nothing to do with level of education or age. It’s pretty much across the board. I noticed it in my surgeon, I notice it with my friends, and it’s been like that for most of my life. So, today, my team won and I feel good.

Second, I wasn’t in much pain – I guess the morphine was working ok.

Or Not Really! – And third, I could see that I wasn’t alone in knowing all the things that didn’t work in the hospital. I got the sense that the guy diagonally opposite to me had the same thoughts, and I coerced Helene into talking to his wife so they could share some common ground and really get to the bottom of whatever conspiracy was going on here. It was at this point I think that Helene started seeing that there was something going on with me and my level of presence / sanity / grasp of reality that might be attributable to more than just lots of morphine.

Or Maybe? – Anyway, the powers that be decided that maybe I was improving, given that they were looking at indicators other than the level of incoherence and paranoia coming out of my mouth. Yes folks, my ramblings didn’t seem to interest the medical staff as much as they did my family, and since I seemed to be recovering quite well from the surgery, they decided to move me to a “normal” ward the next day.

A normal ward is one of those oxymorons like jumbo shrimp and “go ahead and stop” (said frequently in Texas) and military intelligence……… and adult male (my personal favourite). But more about that later…..

Comments

I really love what you blog about here, very refreshing and smart. One problem though, I’m running Firefox on Fedora and parts of your layout pieces are a little misaligned. I know it’s not a common setup, but it is still something to to keep in mind. Just tossing you a heads up.

Yep, I did start to get get a sense that all was not right when I hesitantly walked over to speak to the woman Moshe was socomvinced knew about what was reallygoing on, and whose husband had had exactly the same thing as him. Well, she had no idea of course what I was talking about, and no, her husband hadn’t in fact had anything like Moshe’d had, and she seemed really uninterested in anything I had to say. And then Moshe was convinced that the woman in the bed across from him was into some weird religious thing, when all that was happening over there was a little bit of regular prayer.

As you know, I did 2 years of brain cancer with my dear man who no longer spoke. He didn’t or couldn’t share his thoughts on the process. Somewhere in the middle I wondered about his sanity and perceptions and experiences even though I could never know. It’s refreshing to read about a different condition and different experience from you, even if you were paranoid and delusional, because you are articulate, entertaining and more than a little self aware. That said, it’s no big surprise that a charming digression into oxymorons would lead to your personal fave: “adult male.” Bingo! God, I miss you guys!

Hi Sue, yep we miss you too. And I really miss your dear man. Oxymorons are fun, aren’t they? We just had an election down here and the choices were basically between liberals (which we call Labor) and conservatives (which we call Liberal), and then in each party we also have liberal conservatives and conservative liberals. And finally, we also have Greens who are very liberal, who the Liberals (ie the conservatives) probably think are reds, and Nationals who form a conservative coalition with the Liberals. So the “moron” in “oxymoron” is really appropriate!!!

I gotta know what on earth was the problem. Hurry and post more of this delightful blog so I’ll know what happened to you. Did you live through it, whatever the “it” was? Well, I suppose you did given you’re writing about it. I love and adore you and Helene and miss you so much. Dallas isn’t the same without you.

Moshe, sometimes I can get in the Message/Comment page, sometimes can’t access it from Beijing. I left a note on your earlier update. Did you get it? My love and strength to you, Helene and your whole family. Jenny